Grand Canyon National Park - South Rim

October 8, 2009

Today the sun was out! We had a productive day and are almost done with this park. We have one more 26 mile long route left to collect tomorrow morning. We are then headed to Phoenix and will fly to Denver on Saturday morning.

Two photos posted are from the East side of the park. The squirrel (maybe chipmunk) was in a campground near the village and didn't seem to mind our loud diesil truck, it just kept on eating so I took a quick photo.

Just to tell you another glamorous part of my job...The Internet at our hotel is really bad. We keep getting dropped, not dropped from the connection but the browser keeps saying the page can not be displayed. I've called their IT 3 or 4 times and I'm done with trying to tell other people that something is wrong with their equipment. So, since the connection is terrible in the hotel I'm currently sitting in the truck in the parking lot of another hotel that has reliable Internet. Not like I don't spend enough time in the truck already but now at 9:15 at night I'm in the truck again so I can get on the Internet...gotta love it. The only thing that makes it OK is I'm listening to the Twilight soundtrack.

Grand Canyon National Park - South Rim

October 7, 2009
Today we woke up to wet roads! In the desert...really! The only good thing is that we are now on the South Rim where passing the time is much, much easier. We started down the Bright Angel Trail but made it about 1/2 a mile or so and then turned around. It started to down pour with sleet/small hail, it lasted about 5 minutes. We then just hiked along the rim. Overall the day has been rainy and cloudy with some periodic sunshine. We hope the rain is done so the roads are dry for us tomorrow! It was good to get out and hike some...We probalby hiked about 2.5 miles. We then ate lunch at one of the lodge restaurants which was pretty good and lodge atmosphere is always nice.

Grand Canyon National Park - South Rim

October 6, 2009
Today was a productive day. We collected about 43 routes today. It was a long day in the truck and didn't get to see much scenery. We did see some deer and a pretty big elk while collecting, the photo was taken from the truck. At the end of the day we took a short walk to look at the canyon from this side. Look close at one of the photos I posted and you can see the South Rim lodge, photo taken from the North Rim. It was hard to find but Jeff's good eye spotted it and I tested the zoom on my camera to try to get a photo...not bad. Keep in mind it is about 10 miles away as the crow flies (23 miles - via the hiking trail).

Grand Canyon National Park - North Rim

October 5, 2009
This morning we took the truck to a shop to get the axle oil leak fixed and to have a new DMI rod put on the tire. It was productive and a good feeling to know those things were fixed. It only took about one hour.

We then drove south to the North Rim only to find out the last road we needed to collect was still closed. It is difficult to pass time in the North Rim because there are not many trail. We ended up sitting in the lodge doing some work on our laptops and then eating lunch in the lodge, which turned out to be pretty good food. We then drove up to Cape Royal road at 1:00pm and the gate was finally OPEN!!!! We collected the route, took a short hike to an overlook and we finished around 3:00pm. We then had to drive to the South Rim which is only about 23 miles as the crow flies but since there are no direct roads through the canyon the drive took about 4 hours.

The area driving up to the North Rim looks a lot like Yellowstone, not something I really expected. Today we saw Bison in the field when we were leaving the park.

Also, the truck is officially dirty. These days clean is only a relative term but we've had such long days (another 80 hour week last week) and a lot to fix on the truck to keep it running that washing the truck just doesn't take priority. It is hard to be proud of the truck when other people ask what it is, not only because it is dirty but because it often isn't working. I attached a photo of the outside of the truck. The axle oil is all over the back tire and on the chassis behind the tire, there is gas that flowed down the side (for some crazy reason), there is dirt, dust and bug guts everywhere. What a sweet truck.

Grand Canyon National Park - North Rim

October 4, 2009

Today we drove from Washington, UT (ZION) to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and then back up North a bit to stay in Kanab, UT.

The wind at the North Rim was howling today. They had gusts up to 70mph. They closed Cape Royal Road due to trees down on the road. A park ranger said by noon they had already cleared about 25 trees from the road. We should hopefully have access tomorrow. Since the road was closed our collection day ended around 2:00 so we took a short hike to an overlook (photo is posted). It was rough because of the wind.

One of the attached photos shows a bird that decided to hop on the truck while we were collecting routes in a campground. We were looking at some pavement video and were just about to do another run and this bird comes flying up at us. I have no idea what it was thinking...maybe it was trying to say "get out of my space".